WRV54G Problems

I have 5 wrv54's on 5 different client sites. They each have 3 vpn tunnels to a cisco pix.

I hear complaints about the wireless dropping. This seems to have been resolved lately by changing all of them to use channel 11.

However, my bigger problem is that the web interface will completly drop. Once that happens if the router isn't rebooted, the router will freeze.

Rebooting solves this but you never know how long it will last for.

I have one router running 2.37 and the other 4 are running 2.36

Any ideas??? I haven't tried the latest beta or going back to 2.2x

I will post my results as I move forward.

If anyone has any other version of firmware, could you please forward them to me. This router actually came loaded with 2.31....but I can't find the firmware and I didn't think I test that one first..DUH

1) Connectivity dies and then Web Interface drops requiring a reboot.
2) The first 2 entries in Port Forwarding randomly delete themselves.
3) The hostname in setup populates itself with various PC names.

Linksys / Cisco has really done a number of their customers with this "gem". As much as this POS costs, you'd think they'd be more Johnny-on-the-spot about fixing these REALLY bad problems. Instead, you get tech support based in Bangalore, India, where it will take you 10 minutes alone to say your e-mail address and make sure they get it right. On 2/24/05, they told me they'd never heard about the Port Forwarding problem... and told me they'd send me a beta firmware to try. It's now 24+ hours later, and I still don't have anything to try. I'm taking this expensive, overpriced POS back today. I require solid connectivity - not the random behaviour this POS's giving me.

The Linksys WRV54G is NOT ready for Consumer Use, and shame on Linksys/Cisco for releasing it! The WRV54G has Alzheimer's Disease.

Well, the dlink hasn't dropped yet, but the linksys with software 2.21 it failed on the web and icmp pings, but recovered after 30 mins, and failed again 2 hours later permamently. I will try the next version of firmware and see where it takes me.

I am using hardware rev .02 not sure if there is anything else out there?

Well, I am in the same boat as you. My testing right now shows 2.36 and below all are unstable. 2.37.1 I have had fail before, but it rarely happens. I haven't had 2.37.7 fail yet...but I am waiting.

The dlink 825vup has not dropped yet. The only bug I can find with it, is that when you reboot the router in software it will not bring up all the tunnels, it must be powered off and powered on again...not a big deal for as often as these are re-configured.

You should take a look at 2.37.7beta .. it might help you out , i'm curious if it does or not.

Seems to me that I'm getting closer to figuring out this wrv54g vpn problem. I went to my local panerabread that offers wifi access so that I could connect to the wrv54g vpn router.

I've spent alot of time trying various tips from forums, linksys etc..etc.. and still come up short. The screwed up thing is that I met a new friend from england and he emailed me suggesting various tips and helping out.

We worked on this wrv54g vpn for about a hour and I still came up with the same dam error mesage "remote gateway not responding".

I decided to create a dummy account so that my friend who could logging into the vpn router and presto - no problems.
He got in first try!! Now, is that a m*&^*&tfu*&(ker...

So I have to ask - what is it on this laptop that is causing me to fail the vpn connection?

I've a laptop - its windows xp pro, only program installed is msn im, tight vnc (but does not register), and service pack 2. The firewall is turned off on windows security. So there should be no reason this shouldn't work.

Here's a log of the vpn connection that didn't work. Please note ip address have been changed to protect my network security.

If someone can suggest something that would be great. Maybe its a service that needs to be turned on, or in tcp filtering to get a successfull connection.

Btw: my friend was using windowsxp home edition with other various software apps.

I think I grabbed it off of here somewhere. I can not remember if it will or not. I did it anyway just to be sure with all the problems i've been having.

So far it's running good on my customer sites, however in my lab the worst 2.37.7 has done to me is simply reboot. It's not perfect, but it's alot better than hanging I guess.....how my dlink is STILL running solid....I smell a large RMA soon....

same problem here - internet drops and wireless connection reboots by itself. i'm using firmware 2.37.1 right now. it's really unstable specially when the wireless network is saturated. should i downgrade to 2.21?

kspare,

any news from the firmware you're using right now? i saw a 2.37.9 firmware from the china site.

Seems to me that I'm getting closer to figuring out this wrv54g vpn problem. I went to my local panerabread that offers wifi access so that I could connect to the wrv54g vpn router.

Click to expand...

I didn't think the wrv54g could transverse a NAT, I've tried to connect to my wrv54g via various services like, GPRS and wifi that includes NAT's and it never works. I always get a unreachable message.

Whereas if I connect via a dialup connection, I get a perfect connection.

I started with firmware 2.36 and i kept getting dropped connections, a simple dhcp release/renew corrected the problem. Looking at the logs through linklogger I noticed it was rebooting and not picking up an address when it finished.

So I upgraded to 2.37 same problem
then to 2.37.7 same problem
then down to 2.25.2 and its been up 23 hours straight!

What a pain! I toyed with some setting slightly, but always went back to the defaults before giving up on the firmware.

As for how often it rebooted, it was random, and anywhere from a few hours to a few minutes. I was not able to make it reboot using the wireless, downloading large files over the network, or connecting with the vpn, it was just random as far as I could tell!

They don't, they are running very stable right now. I have had zero problems. One router that gave me problems has been up for 442 hours now. Keep in mind, I don't pass alot of traffic on these routers, they used strictly for vpn and internet traffic.

rzeronine said:

kspare,

thanks a lot for the reply!
how often does your router reboot using firmware 2.37.7?

I'm running 2.37.1 and I've encountered the web interface login lock-up problem as well. I'm still doing some testing, but I think there might be a link between this lockup problem and enabling SNMP monitoring. I've been using both WallWatcher and the freeware version of the PRTG Traffic Grapher. When both of these logging apps stop recording messages from the WRV54G, I can no longer log on to the web interface and I cannot establish a wireless connection. Wired connections still work. Things seem OK if I have SNMP disabled at the router - but I'm still testing.

Condition #1)
Transmit signal completely drops off the radar (Net Stumbler or any other WiFi Tool that I have, CAIN's, and the Dell Utility)

Condition #2)
Transmit signal actually changes frequencies! Even though it's set to one paticular channel. I've seen Net Stubler even register that it's transmitting on Channel 8 and 4 simultaneously. All above WiFi tools reflect the same condition. Obviously, WAP is unusable at this time.

No, it's "not a man in the middle attack", the SNR readings on the two readings in Net Stumbler, and other tools show the exact same signal strength and SNR values.

Condition #3)
After a few minutes on conditions 1 and 2 _sometimes_, the power LED is blinking. It's obviously self-rebooted.

I'm using TKIP WPA.
Using three different channels (6,8,2) same results.

I've seen a few people say that using channel 11 solves this stability problem, wonder if there is a hardware problem with this unit when it comes to frequency agility.

I did notice, that my interval for the above problems increases drastically when running in G-Only mode vs. mixed.

Channels 6 and 8 are "too" close to each other, which causes overlapping. If you're not up on wire channel configuration, the ideal settings are 1, 6, and 11 because of the distance between them in the spectrum chart. Overlapping is your problem so if you can, it would be best to go with 1, 6, and 11 for your channels...